“Taio.”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up and kiss me now.”
His arms envelop me completely, a shelter against everything outside this taxi. When our lips meet, the cameras vanish, the shouting fades. The world beyond our fogged windows ceases to exist. It’s just his heartbeat against mine, the warmth of his breath, and somewhere above the chaos, stars bearing silent witness to the start of something more.
chapter 24
Charlie
Steam clings to the bathroom mirror, softening my reflection into something impressionistic. I’ve been in here for forty-five minutes—longer than any shower requires, even one meant to wash away the frenzy of paparazzi flashbulbs and Grayson’s venom and the weight of a thousand cameras capturing my impulsive choice to blow up my reputation.
I’m stalling. I realize that.
I rub my hair with the towel until it’s just damp enough to curl at the edges. I consider blow-drying it straight, then decide to let it be. My reflection looks different. Softer. I uncap the lotion bottle, inhaling vanilla and sugar as I massage it into my arms with deliberate circles. Each stroke stretches time, though there’s no real reason to delay what waits beyond the bathroom door.
Still, my hands are trembling.
It’s not fear, exactly. It’s something bigger. It’s like standing at the edge of a cliff, knowing you’re about to jump, trusting that the water below will catch you but still terrified of the fall.
I’m not about to have sex with some random guy. I’m not about to check a box or get it over with or prove something to anyone. I’m about to give myself—all of myself, the parts I’ve protected and hidden and saved—to Taio. The man whose bookshelves overflow with dog-eared romance paperbacks and whose fingers can transform bedsheets into castles. The man who stepped between me and a wall of flashing cameras, extended his palm toward mine, and proudly claimed me with no sense of self-preservation.
He stood with me when he could’ve stayed in the shadows.
I pause, lotion half absorbed into my forearm, and stare at my reflection through the dissipating steam. When did this happen? When did “I like you” become “I’m falling” become this quiet, certain knowledge that settles in my chest like a heartbeat?
I can trace it back to different moments: his handwritten notes appearing in my box when I needed them most; my triumph in Miami which felt shared between the two of us; or just hours ago, when his body became my shield against the enemy of flashing cameras and angry interrogations, his stance unwavering.
It was all of it. Every small moment building into something neither of us can ignore anymore.
I think about my mom.
She fell in love so many times. Not just with Spencer’s dad. Not just with mine. I have vague memories from being little, watching her get ready for dates—the careful application of lipstick, the way she’d spritz perfume on her wrists and behind her ears, the nervous energy that made her seem younger somehow. Spencer would stay home to watch me and wish our mother luck. Maybe this wasthe one. She believed in love the way some people believe in religion.Completely. Recklessly.Over and over again.
And none of them stayed. Each departure left a trail of shattered vows, tissues stained with mascara, and the hollow echo of another failed romance. She’d straighten her spine, reapply her lipstick, and somehow, after enough time passed, her eyes would start to sparkle with possibility again.
I used to think she was foolish. Now I wonder if she was brave.
How do you know if it’ll last?
That’s the question I’ve been asking myself since I realized what Taio means to me. How do you trust something so fragile and new? How do you give someone the power to destroy you and have faith that they won’t?
The truth? You can’t.
Standing here in this steamy bathroom, trembling on the edge of something terrifying and beautiful, I realize something: you can’t learn to swim by thinking about water. You can’t understand love by watching other people drown in it. At some point, you have to leap.
And looking back at my mother’s advice, all the little pieces, fragments of her lessons learned, stuffed into heart-shaped notes…I see it now with blinding clarity. I missed the point. She wasn’t telling me to wait for love. She was screaming at me to love myself first, with the desperate urgency of someone who learned it too late. The truth burns through me: I’d pass this same raw, vital lesson to my own daughter with my dying breath. To Claire’s daughter. To Remy and Eli. This is what’s been bleeding beneath my music all along. I’ve been hemorrhaging inside not because strangers on the internet hated me, but because I couldn’t look at my own reflection and see something worth protecting.
That all changes now.
I take a breath. Then another.
Then I pull on a non-Tweety tank top over my bra—soft cotton, thin straps, shielding half of my ass. I wear a simple pair of underwear. Nothing fancy. Nothing performative.Just me.
I open the bathroom door.
The living room space has been transformed.
